


A Zombie Apocalypse is Never Going to Happen!

by DomesticatedTendencies



Series: Thinking Out Loud [2]
Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: ALL THE FLUFF, AU, Alternate Universe - No Zombies, Bad Jokes Make Me Laugh, Beth Greene's lower lip, Better check Beth's purse, Daryl Dixon ain't Beth's Daddy, Daryl is late to the show, Daryl's stupid gummy worms, Date Night, F/M, Fluff, For the Win, Jeffrey Dean Morgan slaying those zombies, Married Couple, Movie Night, No one wants to see that, Older Man/Younger Woman, Pouting, fake movies are fake, flapping in the wind, mucking up the business, she got that good candy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 03:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12004227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DomesticatedTendencies/pseuds/DomesticatedTendencies
Summary: Beth can't get in to a rated R movie because she has a purse full of candy and looks like a 12 year old delinquent.





	A Zombie Apocalypse is Never Going to Happen!

**Author's Note:**

> I have to thank my sister Bishmonster who held my hand through writing this, and laughed hysterically at my awkward jokes, and then jumped on the fake movie bandwagon with me! She's the best!

It was Friday night and it seemed like the whole town was in line for the movies. The marque of the modest 10 screen theater touted two new major blockbusters: some zombie gore fest staring Jeffrey Dean Morgan and the book turned movie that every red blooded woman on the planet wanted to see. 

Beth Dixon née Greene, was part of the latter group. She had read the book. Twice. And she had heard that the highly anticipated shower scene was beyond HAWT. She definitely needed to see for herself, you know, for literary accuracy. Plus she wanted to know if critics were right when they labeled it the sexiest two hours and fifteen minutes of cinema, ever. EVER! So with a purse full of chocolate and tissues for that cliffhanger ending they all knew was coming (hello sequel!), she waited impatiently as the line for tickets inched forward.

She checked her phone for the hundredth time. Daryl was late; working overtime at the garage. Every extra dollar they earned was tucked away for the day they might purchase their dream home but she suspected tonight's overtime had less to do with their five year plan and more to do with the fact that he did not want to see this movie with her. Well tough cookies. She had sat through Smokey and the Bandit five hundred times. She could quote the stupid movie ad nauseam! Not to mention that she has recently endured four nights of not only camping Daryl Dixon style (in the middle of nowhere without access to running water or a toilet) but had also helped with the field dressing of his various kills. He owed her, big time, and he was taking her to see this gosh dang movie.

“I can help the next guest over here!” The ticket seller was practically yelling in to his little speaker, spittle from his pudgy mouth spraying the glass window he sat behind.

Beth blinked. It took her a full ten seconds before she realized he was talking to her. Then she rushed forward, feeling awkward and frazzled.

“Uh, two for the 6:45,” She told him as she dug for the twenty she had tucked in the front pocket of her jeans.

From behind the ticket window, he looked her up and down with eyes set too close together. “Do you have ID?”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “My ID?” She asked innocently.

“Identification,” Mr. Spits with his pouch belly and receding hairline was all business in his cheap suit and assistant managers badge.“That movie is rated R.”

“Oh. Right,” Beth agreed, ‘cause sexy shower scene and possibly/maybe full frontal nudity. “Just a sec.”

She turned her back to him, trying to hide her bulging purse from his beady little eyes. She knew she wasn't supposed to sneak candy in to the movies but she was grown woman and couldn't justify spending five bucks for a KitKat. Between sheepish smiles and muttered apologies to the people waiting in line, she looked through her purse. And looked. And looked. Dang it! She knew right where her wallet was, sitting on the kitchen table where she had left it to make room for an economy sized bag of sour gummy worms. Stupid Daryl and his stupid gummy worms.

Closing her purse, she turned back to the ticket window. “Um, I seem to have forgotten it?” She didn't know why it came out sounding like a question.

“I'm sorry Miss, then I can't sell you the tickets,” The boredom in his voice a clear sign of how little he actually cared. 

“What? Are you serious?” So shocked was she that she was stuck somewhere between rage and a full on pout. “Why?”

His gave her a deadpan stare. “It's rated R.”

“I'm 22 years old!” She cried indignantly.

Judging by his face he neither believed her nor cared. “You can see The Dead Uprising 3. It's rated PG-13,” He offered not helpfully.

“What!” She couldn't believe this. Of all the condescending, patronizing, jerk things… 

“No one wants to see The Dead Uprising 3!”

“It wasn’t bad,” He shrugged.

“Are you kidding me?” Beth huffed. “A zombie apocalypse is never going to happen, let alone 3 gosh dang times!”

He blinked at her, one stupid beady eye and then the other. “Take it or leave it.”

Her mouth opened and then closed. Daryl loved to tease her about how cute her fishy face was when she was mad, so she tried to squint her eyes like he did in an attempt at looking stern. It failed. Miserably. And as the people waiting in line started to grumble about the hold up, she sulked off.

Beth was pouting. Full on, arms crossed and lip stuck out, pouting with her foot back against the brick side of the movie theater. It was 6:42pm. The previews she wasn't going to get to watch were about to start to the movie she wasn’t going to get to see all because she looked like a twelve year old delinquent with a purse full of candy. So invested was she in her lament that she hardly noticed when the all too familiar ‘55 pan head painted primer black and nowhere near completed pulled up to the curb.

“The hell? I thought I was meeting you inside?” Daryl gruffed, and then taking one look at her. “What happened?”

She collapsed against him. Her nose to his sternum, she balled the warm soft leather of his worn vest in her small fists as the words began to tumble incoherently from her lips.

Daryl didn't balk at her clinging or even try to pull away. Not anymore. He'd gotten over that a long time ago. Instead he squeezed her by the shoulders, tucked his chin in to the top of her head and tried to make sense of the nonsense she was rambling.

“Hold up, girl. I can't understand you. Who’s 12?”

“Me!” She cried pitifully. “Stupid guy wouldn't sell me the tickets because the movie is rated R and I don't have my ID.”

“And he called you a juvenile delinquent?” He growled, sounding all surly and defensive. 

She looked up at him to see his eyes narrowed, his expression dark. She knew that look. It was a dangerous look. It was the look he got right before he was about to go on a tear. She knew she needed to diffuse it.

“Well, no,” She sniffed, smoothing the front of his shirt with her hands. “I might have added that part. Its just that I feel so stupid.”

“Stupid for leavin’ your wallet or for bein’ mistook for a kid?” He asked, his cheek twitching in a half smirk.

“Both?” She conceded.

He snorted, almost a laugh, and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “C’mon then. Still got time.”

“I don't wanna,” She whined as he steered her back towards the ticket line.

“I ain't going through this again next week. Now you want to see this movie or not?” He gave her a hard stare, daring her to say no.

“Fine,” She grumbled.

He pulled her in to his side and kissed the top of her head. “I'll even treat ya to popcorn.”

“Daryl, I've got five pounds of candy in my -.”

“I can help the next guest over here.”

Dang it! Mr. Spits again. Fine. She could be the bigger person. Even if he did spit on the window and looked like he played Dungeons and Dragons in his mother's basement.

Daryl Dixon strode forward, all badass and cool confidence. 

“Two,” He bit out. For as long as she had known him he had communicated best in grunts and broken sentences.

The ticket seller was eyeballing Beth with open suspicion. “Which movie?”

“What the hell, man,” Daryl groused. “The one with the 1980’s Mickey Rourke lookin’ motherfucker.”

Beth blushed. Deep and painful. She might not have been alive in the 80’s but she got the reference. She had even attempted to enact the “You Can Leave Your Hat On” striptease for him. Once. Before they both fell over laughing. Dancing sexy with a straight face was definitely not her thing.

The judgy eyed spittle machine printed the tickets. Then sliding them through the slot, said, “You’re going with your daughter, right?”

Her mouth fell open. She was completely outraged while Daryl gave an amused sort of snort and took the tickets.

“Sure thing,” He gritted, slipping his wallet back in to the back pocket of his jeans.

A wild growl rolled in the back of Beth’s throat - a noise she only ever made when truly frustrated.

“Ain't heard you make that sound since the last time your cookin' set off the smoke detector,” Daryl teased lightly as he opened the door for her.

“Dang it, Daryl!” She fumed, smacking him on the bicep as she passed. “Ain't bad enough that the jerk already thinks I'm a kid, now he’s gone thinking I'm your daughter too! Doesn't it bother you?”

“Why should it?” He gave a careless shrug that only served to fuel her temper more.

“Just! Just because it should!” She threw her hands up, completely done. They were standing in the lobby now, no closer to actually seeing the movie than they had been five minutes ago.

“How old am I?” He asked and then. “How old was I when we started sneakin’ around?”

“Daryl…” Her tongue clicked against the roof of her mouth as she checked around them, making sure her little outburst hadn't attracted any unwanted attention.

“I’ll tell you, baby girl. You was 17 and I was thirty-three,” He leveled her with a gunmetal stare. “You think that asshole there was the first to ever think I was your daddy?”

“But you ain't my daddy,” She told him pointedly.

“I know that,” His voice was like sandpaper as he brushed his thumb across her flushed cheek. “And you know it too. So why you going and gettin’ upset over some dumbass working the ticket booth at the cineplex?”

“I dunno,” She sighed. Shrugging her shoulders, she shook her head. “I guess maybe it did this time because he was being such a jerk about it.”

“You want, I'll go take him out back,” He offered, only half joking. “Rough him up for ya a bit.”

“No! No. Not necessary,” She laughed a little broken, then asked, “When did it stop bothering you?”

With a hand at the small of her back he pulled tight against him. Their bodies flush together, his voice, so rough and full of grit, was a soothing balm to both her ears and her heart. “When I figured out lovin’ you meant more than what people thought of us bein’ together.”

She smiled at that. Her hands splayed against his hard chest, she rocked forward on her toes, leaning up to kiss him. His lips were so fine, his body strong. Kissing him, she knew he was right. It didn't matter. It never had. Not even when she had written in her journal at 17, how she had fallen in love with a man twice her age and how she knew one day she would marry him.

“C’mon,” He graveled against her tingling lips. “We hurry now and you won't miss but a few minutes of your movie.”

“It doesn't matter,” She sighed, no longer caring about some stupid shower scene, unless of course it was their own. “We can see The Dead Uprising 3 instead if you want. It starts at 7.”

Daryl made a face: half recoil and half eye roll. “A zombie movie? The hell you want to go see a goddamn zombie movie for? How good can it be if it took ‘em 3 times to figure out aim for the goddamn head?”

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments and kudos. They keep me going. Even if you hate it!


End file.
